Crazy looking African carved panel

This is at a local auction. It looks nuts. So there some queen woman with hecka jewelry on, but...get this right, she's got fishy mermaid legs...and she's strangling two alligators... and there may or may not be two guys coming out of each of the alligators asses, or maybe just from behind them.

So yeh, I reckon that's what my naive culture offending eyes see haha.

Do any of you know what this amazing looking panel actually depicts, I absolutely love it. Its got to be a god or a legend, it's so random!

 

I think your description nailed it, except that the alligator/crocodile guys appear to be milking a giraffe, or something.....like a strange version of Romulus and Remus.

 

I think it is likely Olukun (photo from a dead pinterest link).

I found this by searching : Benin mesuline

So that's a possible lead for further research.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olokun

 

Olokun, god of the sea in west Africa, is associated with wealth and trade and therefore associated with the Oba, the King of Benin. The double fish tails can be an attribute of Olokun, and also of Mami Wata, a female water divinity. The specific double-tailed mermaid imagery seems to be derived from decorated objects brought to west Africa by Portuguese traders beginning in the late 15th century. (Henry John Drewel: Mami Wata - Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and Its Diaspora. African Arts, Vol. 41:No.2, 2008.)
Mami Wata takes the form of La Sirene in Haitian Vodoun, usually depicted with only one tail.
Obas wear highly elaborate costume, weighed down with coral beads, as portrayed in this wooden plaque.

 

For starters, then just get better from there...

Future in catalog copy writing!

 

We won't tell the people of West Africa.
In Africa those gators are more likely to be crocs.

Absolutely!

 

Melusine in Otranto Cathedral, Italy:


And, of course, Starbucks: